Terror in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  On a cold, blustery late fall morning, Ben stood on the outskirts of Birminghan, lowered his binoculars, and gave the orders. “Commence shelling.”

  Everything from 203mm artillery to 87mm mortars began dropping their deadly payloads into the heart of the city. The barrage was a never-ending roll and crash of thunder and smoke and flames and destruction.

  To those trapped in the city, it tore not only at flesh and muscle and bone, it ripped nerves raw. There was no place to run and hide and feel safe; one could not get away from the booming crash. The barrage went on all day, all night, all the next day, and all the next night. Then, silence.

  From the center of the city, running for blocks in all directions, there was nothing but rubble and smoke and flames and death. Those left alive in the city staggered out into the streets and stood in fear and awe, gazing through glazed eyes at what Hell must look like.

  “Tanks in,” Ben ordered. “Let’s go.”

  Resistance was almost nil. En masse, the survivors of the continuous forty-eight-hour bombardment stood in the rubble-strewn streets, their shaking hands in the air. Hoping that the Rebels would not shoot them on the spot. Weeping and trembling and pissing and stinking in their fear. And praying that Rebels would take them and not the BRF.

  “Turn them over to the British,” Ben ordered.

  “Then kill me now!” one outlaw screamed in panic. “Them people will hang us.”

  “That’s your problem,” Ben told him in a cold voice. “And I don’t want to hear a slopjar full of shit about your troubled childhood, or that the coach wouldn’t let you play, or that the prettiest girl in class wouldn’t give you the time of day.”

  “You’ll rot in hell for what you’re doin’, General,” a woman told him, standing with her hands in the air. “The Lord preached love.”

  “I’m not the Lord,” Ben told her. “If you’ve got a complaint, take it up with the real article. You’ll be face to face with Him soon.”

  The prisoners were taken away to be tried in a British court of law. Most would hang or be shot, some would be tossed in the jug for the rest of their lives. A few of the younger ones would be given a second chance.

  The Rebels and the BRF began digging out the creeps who had retreated to the bowels of the city. They pumped teargas and pepper gas and carbon monoxide into the sewers and tunnels and basements and shot the Believers as they staggered out. The Rebels had learned a long time back there was no point in trying to rehabilitate a creepie. It was a waste of time.

  The Rebels found several locations where the creeps had kept their human food source. Most of the men and women and children had been reduced to babbling idiots or something very close to it. They were turned over to the British. There was very little anyone could do for them except institutionalize them and care for them as humanely as possible.

  The troops pulled out of the city. It was dead.

  “Let them in London sweat,” Ben issued the orders. “We take Scotland next.”

  The Rebels and the BRF spread out west to east and began their slow march north.

  “Looks like my ass is next,” Glasgow Scotty radioed Butch.

  “Looks like it,” Butch replied.

  “Paratroops into Aberdeen,” Ben ordered. “Secure the seaport and the airport.”

  “Watch for paratroopers,” Butch radioed. “Raines is a sneaky bastard. He’ll send jumpers in to attack from your rear.”

  “Once the city is secure,” Ben told Dan, who would be commanding the jumpers, “start securing everything north of the Grampian Mountains.”

  “I’ve pulled my people out of the north,” Scotty said. “We’re concentrated in and around Glasgow.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” Butch warned him. “Get the hell out while you still have time.”

  “And go where?” Scotty asked bitterly. “That son of a bitch who runs Edinburgh hates me as much as I hate Ben Raines. I can’t head over there. We’ve done took everything worth takin’ in the north. I sure as hell ain’t going to North Ireland. So where does that leave me?”

  “Fucked, I guess,” Butch said.

  “That just about sums it up,” Scotty replied. “Glasgow Scotty out.”

  Butch clipped the mic and sighed. “Raines has got a lot of England to cover before he reaches Scotland. But reach it he will. I don’t like you, Scotty. But I wouldn’t wish Ben Raines and the Rebels on anybody.”

  “Butch! Butch!” an aide called. “Switch to our coastline frequency.”

  “Go ahead, coastwatcher.”

  “Raines has got a whole bunch of old rust-buckets runnin’, Butch. He’s stretchin’ them out from just off the Suffolk coast all the way down to Kent. There must be a hundred of them. He’s got them rigged for helicopter landin’s. Got pads on them and everything. And they’re all armed with heavy machine guns and mortars and stuff.”

  “The choppers?”

  “No, God damn it, Butch! The ships! They’re floating forts. He’s taken what looks like turret guns off old British tanks and mounted them suckers on the ships. And he’s got twin 40mm Bofers on ’em, too. Butch, he’s trapped us.”

  “Just calm down and hang tight, coastwatcher. Keep me informed. Butch out.”

  “Has he, Butch?” Lulu asked.

  “Has he what?”

  “Trapped us.”

  “He’s put the lid on, Lulu. But he hasn’t screwed it down tight. Not yet. He’s got to be thin. Real thin. He’s got troops all over the island, and now he’s got them at sea.”

  “And that means what, Butch?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we can punch through and scatter, get away that way. I don’t know. I got to think on this, Lulu. Raines don’t hardly make mistakes. But he may have made one this time.”

  Not really. The crews manning the ships were not Rebels. The blockade was Mr. Carrington’s idea, and the average age of the crews on board ship and behind the guns was sixty-five. It turned out that Mr. Carrington was actually a retired British admiral. He’d been a young sixteen-year-old sailor stranded on shore and had picked up the first rifle he’d found and fought with the Army. Now, some sixty years later, he just rounded up a bunch of his cronies, from all branches of service, and put them to work. They all needed something to do anyway.

  “Look lively on deck, boys!” Carrington shouted from the bridge. “Stop that dawdling about and get that equipment secured. Tight and right, now. Hop to it.”

  “Hop” was not the right choice of words, since some of the men had trouble walking. But they managed. They were British, after all.

  Back in the 1960s, it was “The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming.” Now it was, “The Rebels are coming, the Rebels are coming.” The Rebels were rolling thirty and forty miles a day north, oftentimes without even firing a shot. When the punks and crud and crap heard the Rebels were in striking distance, their resolve broke wide open and they fled north, toward Scotland.

  Ben called a halt when he discovered they were outdistancing their supplies. He halted the convoys and told Ike and Georgi and West to take their battalions and plenty of artillery and see about Liverpool, which from his position lay just about due west.

  “And check out the tunnel that connects Liverpool with Birkenhead, if it’s still intact. If it is, that’s where you’ll find some creepies.”

  “And the Beatles,” Ike said with smile. His smile faded. “If the city’s full of crud, Ben?”

  “Take it down.”

  “Sherwood Forest is not far from here,” Beth said. “That sure rings a bell with me. Why is that, General?”

  Ben smiled. “Robin Hood and his Merry Men, Beth. Take some people and go look at it if you like.”

  She shook her head. “No. I’d rather keep it the way my mother used to read it to me. I remember now. I think it was my mother.”

  Like a lot of people who were young when the Great War hit, Beth had blocked out a lot of her past. It was the kids who had just been born when the world collapsed
who had the worst of it by far — like Lacy and Jackie and Bennie.

  “Be a hell of a fight when we do hit Scotty’s position,” Thermopolis said that evening. He and Rosebud had come over to visit friends in Ben’s One Battalion.

  “It’ll be a scrap for sure.” He looked up as Corrie walked in.

  “Dan and his jumpers have secured the airport and the seaport at Aberdeen, General. Resistance was practically nil. Planes will be leaving in the morning to resupply him, and the ships that you ordered out of port ahead of Dan are only a few hours away from Aberdeen.” She hesitated and Ben caught it.

  “What’s wrong, Corrie?”

  “We’re getting a lot of traffic out of the Continent, General — none of it good. Dr. Chase says they may be facing another plague over there, one that could make the Black Death outbreak in the fourteenth century look like a case of chicken pox.”

  “What did he call it, Corrie?”

  “Bubonic and pneumonic. He’s ordered vaccines to be flown over here from the States, General.”

  “Flown?”

  “Yes, sir. Another group just graduated flight school and they’re rarin’ to go.”

  “All right, Corrie, thank you. Oh, have Lamar crank up some labs in Ireland and start producing the vaccine . . . why are you smiling?”

  “He did that yesterday. But he needs whatever is coming over on the planes. How do you treat this crap, anyway, General?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. With antibiotics, I suppose. And I’m sure that old goat will personally line up all the troops to see me get the first shot – in the butt.”

  “Drop your pants and bend over,” Chase told Ben the following morning.

  “Well, at least you didn’t line up the troops and have them watch,” Ben said.

  “I thought about it.”

  “I’m sure you did.”

  Chase popped him and Ben straightened up. “What is that stuff, Lamar, antibiotics?”

  “Antibiotics — with the exception of penicillin — are used to treat the plague, Ben. What I gave you is a vaccine to prevent you from getting the disease. I’ve got teams setting up now all over Ireland and England to give shots. Get this island secured quickly, Ben. And I mean fast. We’ve got to innoculate every decent man, woman, and child or we’re going to lose thousands.”

  “And be at risk ourselves?” Ben added.

  “Not really. It’s controllable. What we’ve got to watch out for is the pneumonic strain. It’s nearly always fatal.”

  “Why doesn’t penicillin work? I thought that was the magic bullet.”

  Chase sighed. “Because it isn’t broad enough. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

  “No.”

  “Then stick to fighting wars and leave the medicine to me.”

  “Okay,” Ben said with a smile.

  “I’ve started a flea eradication program and while we’re at it we’ll give the dogs and cats their shots for rabies and other canine and feline diseases. And we’ll start a rat eradication program.”

  “Good luck. That’s been tried for centuries and so far as I know, nothing has worked yet.”

  “O ye of little faith,” Chase told him, then left the CP to start giving shots to Ben’s team.

  Moments later Corrie came in, rubbing her butt. “That man has the touch of someone shoeing horses,” she said, and Ben laughed at her.

  Beth followed her in. “Doctors give lousy shots,” she said, then lifted a clipboard. “Ike reports contact with creepies only in Liverpool. It seems that the street punks have fled north into Scotland. Ike says the city appears to have been trashed, much of it destroyed. He’s going to start bringing it down.”

  “What’s the word from Dan and his jumpers?”

  “He’s secured his objective and is moving out into the countryside.”

  “Corrie, advise all batt corns that as soon as the innoculation program is accomplished, we’ll move out. Ike, Georgi, and West will work the coastline and we’ll drive straight up from here. Tina, Thermopolis, the Wolf Pack, and the remainder of the BRF take the east side of the island and work north. We’ll all regroup just south of the Cheviot Hills for the assault on Scotland. And Corrie . . . advise Admiral Carrington and all others patrolling the English Channel by sea or air that no vessel is to be allowed through from the Continent. We can’t risk it. Order any boats, ships, whatever, to turn around and head back. If they refuse, sink them.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ben sat alone in his office, staring out the window. That was a hard decision to have to make, for not all the people fleeing the Continent would be outlaws and creeps. But when you ran the show, there was no one left to hand the buck. You made the decision, and you lived with it.

  “Shit!” Ben muttered.

  Seven

  Personal pets of the Rebels, and there were many, from chickens to gerbils, were carefully bathed and sent back to the rear for safekeeping in a flea-free and rodent-free area. Smoot and Chester were being looked after by the hospital staff at Chase’s main unit, which had now been relocated in Ireland.

  Ike had set back outside of Liverpool and let artillery and gunships devastate the city before moving his people in to mop it up. It had been a hard decision to make until he got word that the punks and creeps had destroyed the churches and twin cathedrals overlooking the Mersey, had burned all the libraries to the ground, and in general had left the city in a shambles. It was a much easier decision to make after that.

  The Rebels knew they had not killed all the Believers in Liverpool; there would be a few still lurking deep in the bowels of the city, in dark, stinking pockets. But the back of the hideous movement had been broken, and when or if the Believers again surfaced, the English people would be ready, and more important, able to deal with them.

  “Colonel Gray says it’s very boring up at his location,” Corrie told Ben. “He’ says he’s spending most of his time trying to see the Loch Ness monster.”

  “Tell him to take a picture of it when he spots it. And to stand easy, we’re just about ready to move. Waiting on Ike to resupply.”

  On a cold, sleety morning, Ben crawled into his wagon and looked at Corrie. “Let’s head for Scotland, Corrie.”

  She lifted her mic and the columns surged forward.

  “Did you remember to pack the tire chains, Cooper?” Jersey asked.

  “Of course I did. What do you think I am, an idiot?”

  Jersey smiled. “I’ll let that one just die a natural death. I’m feeling charitable this morning.”

  Ben looked at her. “Are you sick?”

  “Feel great. I’ve decided to stop picking on Cooper.”

  “I think she’s in love,” Cooper said.

  “I just decided to start picking on Cooper,” Jersey said. “Will you stop tailgating the damn tank, Cooper?”

  Ben smiled. Everything was back to normal with his team.

  The columns moved through what before the war was a very heavily populated area. Now many of the towns were deserted, utterly void of human life.

  “Eerie,” Beth muttered.

  Even Ben admitted to himself that the silent villages and towns were working on his nerves.

  In Bradford and Leeds, the Rebel Scouts finally found signs of life and radioed the news back to the columns. “It’s a trap, Father,” Buddy said, calling in from the outskirts of Bradford. “They want us to think they are solid citizen types. But they just don’t fit the mold. It’s a setup.”

  “Ten-four, son. Back out of there. We’re rolling up.”

  The three Rebel battalions rolled forward, buttoned-up tanks spearheading, and stopped at the edge of town. Ben smiled at the huge banner that the people had stretched high above and completely across the highway.

  WELCOME GENERAL RAINES AND THE REBELS.

  “My, my,” Cooper said. “I wonder if they have soft drinks and cookies, too.”

  “They must think we’re fools,” Jersey said.

  The Rebels waited, advan
cing no further, watching the crowd of men and women at the edge of town, and watching until they got awfully nervous.

  While Dan was north, commanding the jumpers, his battalion had linked with Ben’s One. Ben also had a contingent of Free Irish and BRF people. Since he was light on infantry, Ben was heavy with armor and artillery.

  Ben was amused as they played the cat-and-mouse game. But he quickly tired of it. He got out of the wagon and took a speaker mic. “Give it up, people. You haven’t fired at us, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt as to your intentions. Put your hands in the air and walk toward us. Issue orders to those in the town to do the same. Do it right now, or I’ll level the town with artillery.”

  The fifty or so men and women — mostly men – standing under the welcome banner exchanged glances. Ben watched through binoculars as they spoke briefly, then slowly pulled pistols from under their coats and laid them on the pavement. All around them, in the weed-filled ditches and fields, men rose slowly from hidden ambush positions, their hands in the air, and walked slowly toward the line of tanks.

  “Let me see the people in the town start coming out,” Ben’s voice boomed over the cold landscape.

  “I got to reach under my jacket for a walkie-talkie!” a man yelled, the words just reaching the column. “Don’t shoot.”

  “Go ahead,” Ben told him.

  “Same thing is happening in Leeds,” Corrie informed him.

  “Dan’s XO reporting a mass surrender. Not a shot fired so far.”

  People began filing out of the town, hands in the air.

  “Bring that man with the walkie-talkie to me,” Ben said.

  The two men faced each other. One was clear-eyed, clean-shaven, wearing clean BDUs. The other stank of old sweat and grime, his clothing filthy, his eyes red-rimmed, and his face showing the strain of years of crime and brutality.